


Postilla, Lebanon

by smalltrolven



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 13:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltrolven/pseuds/smalltrolven
Summary: After the Great Deluge, the Postilla, or the Afterward begins. In 2030, Sam finally has the time to write the story of the end of their world and what came next. The Winchesters manage to find some solace in what they’ve long denied themselves. Cas and Jack are presumed gone in the Deluge, but then tales reach the brothers of approaching beings killing with only their voices.





	Postilla, Lebanon

**Author's Note:**

> Not my characters, only my words. Written for the 2019 spn dystopia bigbang.  
> Postilla is a latin word that means: afterwards, after, hereafter, thereafter, afterward, hereupon.  
> Thank you to wendibird for the thorough and terribly useful beta work on this story.  
> Thank you to kuwlshadow for pinch hitting and coming up with such great art for this story.

Make sure to check out the [art masterpost right here.](https://kuwlshadow.tumblr.com/post/185924347078/title-lebanon-postilla-arthur-smalltrolven)

*****

**2030**

Sam adjusted the LED lantern so it wasn’t blinding him, oh how he missed the soft glow of their Tiffany desk lamps. He so rarely got any time alone to sit down and write these days, that’s why he was taking advantage of the opportunity. Dean would be merciless with the teasing if he saw Sam was even bothering. “Who’s going to ever read it?” he would be sure to ask. But Dean wasn’t here at the moment. His brother was out on a supply run and Sam wanted to get this down on paper before he forgot all the details of what they’d experienced. It wasn’t every day you survived the end of the world.

It wasn’t something that they’d expected. Of course they’d both seen all the climate change disaster movies of the recent years, but it happened so much more quickly than they’d ever imagined possible. It seemed like one moment they had been worrying about Michael escaping the cage in Dean’s mind, and the next—practically their whole world was underwater. Of course it hadn’t gone exactly like that, but everything was so tragic and jumbled up in his mind, Sam just wanted to take the time to sort it out by writing it down.

Living where they did, at least they didn’t have the immediate death and destruction of the coastlines to deal with; all those people and places, just wiped clean by the water. It hadn’t slowly risen like a filling bathtub, it had been a cataclysmic thing when the ice sheets had given way. Mid-summer that year—god it was ten years ago now, back in 2020—the world had gotten a whole lot hotter than predicted, and even up where it was supposed to be the coldest the ancient ice couldn’t hold together. That flood of water came a lot earlier and a whole lot faster than anyone had ever dreamed.

Back then, most of the government scientists’ models had predicted that they had ten years, maybe twenty, before the inevitable rise of the sea would slowly start happening. But instead it was all over so quickly in the real world, scientific models be damned. No more New York City or Washington DC, much less anything down in Florida or in-between. They didn’t really know about the West coast; not much had been heard since the massive earthquakes and resulting tsunamis that had happened the same day. Sam was worried that the super volcano in Yellowstone would be going off next. Dean told him he was just remembering that “2012” movie because of his John Cusack obsession, and real life wasn’t like the movies. (Except for how it totally was!)

To Sam, it felt like they’d practically killed themselves (or literally in his own case) stopping the angels’ multiple attempts to bring about The Apocalypse—pretty much for nothing. The rest of the world hadn’t really known how close they’d come to the end of everything all those times before, and they still didn’t know, most of them were dead anyway. No one who was left could escape the reality of apocalypse—they were living it, and none of them cared who’d caused it. They were all just trying to survive to the next day’s sunrise. Everyone the brothers knew had lost most of their families that lived out of state. It had turned out that the very center of the country had been the right place to be, just so they could have the privilege to be some of the last people alive.

Sam wondered if they’d ever hear from another country, or if any even still remained. There had to be pockets of survivors on all the continents, but there was no way to contact anyone with the internet gone, the satellites still up there but unreachable, and the phone lines inoperable. He wondered if it had been as bad on all the other continents as it had been in their part of North America. He regretted that he and Dean had never made it out to Hawaii or to any of the other tropical islands that were no doubt completely undersea.

“Where was Aquaman when you needed him?” Dean had said when Sam had brought the subject of the long-gone tropical islands up. "Even Jason Momoa himself couldn’t save us now. The dude’s probably dead anyway. Doubt there’s anything even left of Hollyweird.”

All those big cities just *poof* gone; Chicago, and Houston, even Dallas, of course New Orleans was gone. Sam could picture the above-ground cemeteries filling with water; all the caskets floating among all the debris of civilization. No more Mardi Gras parades to avoid or Vodoun priestesses to visit for last ditch solutions to the perennial dead brother conundrum.

Their new northern coastline wasn’t that far away now, it was just over the state-line (that no longer really mattered) in what they formerly knew as Nebraska. Sam kept thinking of how Dean had always chanted “sand between our toes” as their ultimate we-time vacation dream. But now there weren’t any stretches of sand to be found; the new coastline was much too new of a beach. He wondered how long it would take to pulverize the Nebraska hardscrabble into lovely sand beaches. At least the bodies, and then skeletons had eventually stopped washing ashore. It had been disturbing to get anywhere near the new body of water for the first year.

When Sam thought about it, they’d lucked out that Lebanon was up at eighteen-hundred feet above sea level (the old sea level), so that when the Great Lakes had been inundated, that thousand extra feet of elevation had saved them. From the West, he supposed the Rockies had also saved them by blocking the inundation that would have come in from the Pacific. The Appalachians to the East had worked pretty well too as a sea wall. Their Southern shore was a whole lot closer now too, and the Mississippi had pretty much become a vast inland sea, all briny and unsustainable. Luckily there were enough fishing ponds around the Lebanon area that they had all the fish they wanted.

Basically their map of the world had gotten a whole lot smaller. The way Dean talked about it, you’d think it was a good thing. “Just think, Sammy, all those hauntings or werewolves or whatever, just gone. It’s all a lot more manageable.”

Problem was, it didn’t feel much more manageable to Sam. He didn’t think this was how Chuck would have wanted things to go down here, so Sam still took some time everyday to hold on to the small brass pendant and pray. He’d talk to Chuck about their latest challenges and triumphs, he’d rant and rave about the vast losses of humanity, and what the hell was the point of it all. But all he ever got back was a whole lot of silence. It wasn’t like he expected Chuck to come back and wave a magic wand to make it all magically come back to the way it was before the deluge. He just wanted to hear that this was how it was supposed to be, that it wasn’t all a cosmic joke or mistake.

At least he hadn’t been the one that caused _this_ apocalypse, right? He sincerely hoped he hadn’t and held onto that belief for the small comfort it offered. Dean had heard him say that once and his brother had just stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time. Then he’d said something Sam had never thought he’d hear his brother say out loud. “It wasn’t you, Sammy. It was the angels, they manipulated both of us. And besides, I’m the one who broke the first Seal in Hell, remember? If that hadn’t happened, you breaking the last Seal wouldn’t have been possible, right? It ain’t all on you is what I’m sayin’, okay?”

It had taken him more than a few minutes to know how to respond, to be able to speak with a voice that wasn’t broken with emotion. “Hadn’t ever thought of it like that, thanks, Dean.”

Dean had just pulled him into a long, wordless hug that said more than several hours of talking ever could. That was one thing that had changed for the good, Sam noted as he wrote, they did hug a whole lot more now than they ever had. And he sure as hell wasn’t complaining about it. They kept better track of each other that way, checking in with their bodies, as well as with their words. It was how they kept the terror of loneliness at bay when they weren’t around the other people who’d survived.

Sam hadn’t been thinking about it as much of a possibility, but the way they’d banded together with the two hundred other inhabitants of Lebanon after the cataclysm had been surprising. Probably the Winchesters had been accepted so easily because at first they had unlimited hot water and electricity, even though everywhere else was so spotty. Whatever the Men of Letters had done when they chose the site and built the bunker, it had worked, and kept on working. They tried not to think about the details too much really. At first Dean wasn’t too happy about having to share their showers with the locals, but once the neighbors began bringing gas cans filled with scavenged gasoline or ethanol, then he settled down about it. They’d made some friends even, people that were fun to hang out with, go hunting (the civilian kind) and then barbecue what they’d caught. Sam was glad that Dean got to show off his fire-making and barbecuing skills to people who’d really appreciate them. He was kind of over it after a lifetime of his firebug brother always burning down things “just in case” they were still haunted.

The best thing was the new community; the inhabitants of Lebanon that they saw regularly now in a much more personal way, instead of those short, impersonal interactions at the gas pump or at the checkout line in the grocery store. Sure, they all missed that, something so simple as the ease and convenience of the grocery store. But the absence of it was bringing them all together, having to go out on longer and longer scavenging runs for supplies in teams, as well as figuring out how to grow the right things to keep them all fed as the years afterward marched on.

Sam had just traded some of their dwindling supply of toilet paper to get them two just-saddle-broken horses. One of the teenagers, Cecily was teaching them both how to really ride instead of just half-assing it and hurting themselves or the horses. Dean was pretty much a natural at it, once he stopped grumbling about not getting to drive his baby. The gas supplies were running low, and there weren’t any spare Impala parts to come by, so they saved driving her for special occasions. The horses, who Dean had renamed (of course) Khaleesi and Khal, were beautiful creatures. Khal was a pain in the ass black and cream stallion who thought he was all that, and indeed he was. Dean had his number though. The calico, Khaleesi, was spirited for a mare, probably to keep up with Khal but Sam didn’t mind. She got him where he needed to go, and had just enough stamina to run with Khal side-by-side.

They’d made a lean-to barn sort of arrangement outside the garage entrance to the bunker. Dan from the Home Depot over in Smithville had traded them some extra shower time for his pregnant wife for the metal roofing panels and support wood. It had been easy to build once they got started, both of them falling into the old rhythms. Dean was surprised at how competent Sam was with the tools, and he’d had to remind Dean of his long-ago stint in probably long-gone Kermit, Texas as a handyman. That had resulted in a two-day sulky silence. Even though Dean had said he’d been forgiven about the whole Amelia/Purgatory thing, Sam knew that it would always rankle between them. He hadn’t forgiven himself, and knew he never would. But they weren’t doing that any longer; no more running away, or getting stuck in other planes of existence. They were tied down to the here and now, surviving each day, looking forward to getting through the next one—together.

Sam smiled at himself as he wrote that down, going back to underline the word together. After all their complicated lives behind them, this cataclysm for the world had been an unexpected blessing for the brothers. Once all the distractions of the hunting world, and the internet and all the rest of it, society’s expectations, whatever else was gone, they’d finally let themselves have this: the comfort of each other. It meant everything to Sam, that he’d gotten this at long last. After a lifetime of pining and trying not to hope or to pounce or to blow it all up, it had been easy. He decided to write it down, not that he was in any danger of forgetting how it happened, but just in case someone in the future wanted to know the real story of how the world had been saved.

On Deluge Day, Jack and Cas had been up in Chicago, studying at one of the religious order libraries, looking for more information about Jack and his potential powers once he’d regenerated the rest of his grace after consuming Michael’s. Since Chicago was definitely gone on the first day, Sam and Dean had given up hoping for their return pretty much right away. What was the point in hoping they’d survived something so catastrophic?

The first night after The Deluge had happened, they’d stayed together in Dean’s room in the bunker, side by side on his bed, searching in vain on both of their laptops for a way to get accurate information. At first there had been a few tv broadcasts, and internet news reports, but then one by one, all the outlets had gone dark. They had held each other and tried not to speak aloud the truth, the horror of surviving this, because it was too much. To lose the world, and for what?

Sam had let himself cry after he’d thought Dean had finally fallen asleep, but soon his brother was rubbing a comforting circle into the center of his back, pulling them closer together, whispering nonsense that soothed him back down into a lower level of panic. He’d wiped his face dry on his pillow and then pressed his face into the warm skin of Dean’s neck, breathing in the comfort of the familiar, of his stone number one. His lips moved as he voiced his thanks that they were still alive and together.

Dean’s hand had moved from his back to twisting in his hair, fingers scratching a distracting rhythm into his scalp. “We’re okay, Sammy. I’ve got you, you’ve got me,” Dean had said, over and over, until Sam had let himself believe it. He’d wound himself around Dean, picturing himself as a child holding onto his big brother after a nightmare, and then felt himself harden against Dean’s thigh. Dean had noticed too, and instead of pulling back in disgust, or throwing Sam out of his bed in anger, he’d shifted so that Sam could feel his arousal too.

“It’s not just me, huh?” Sam had said.

“No, it never has been,” Dean had answered, shifting his hips again until they were fully aligned,

Sam could feel how they pulsed together in time with their heartbeats. He pressed his hips against Dean, grinding a little harder, even though their jeans were in the way, it felt amazing, no even better, it felt—inevitable. Sam’s hands found their way to the back of Dean’s head and pulled it down, his lips moving hot and demanding against Dean’s. They kissed their way back to life that night, pulling each other out of the hopeless pit of despair that survivors of an apocalypse rightly found themselves stuck inside. There was no way out of this but to go through, and they were doing it together, the two of them against the world just like always. And if that meant Sam got this too, what he’d always wanted, well, that was a hell of a tradeoff that he probably wouldn’t have consciously chosen, but he was damn thankful that it had happened.

They’d managed to get their jeans and the rest of their clothes off, slipping and sliding against each other in a heated, heedless rut of desire. Sam had let himself get lost in the rhythm, gave himself over to it, the endless dance they’d been doing finally coming to its inevitable spectacular finish.

There hadn’t been any words for a long time, just two men holding onto each other in an embrace that meant that they were still there, in the world, alive, and together. Finally together just as they’d always secretly wanted and not-so secretly needed.

“Remember the pearl, the one that was supposed to give you your heart’s desire?” Sam had asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Yeah, what about it,” Dean grumbled, no doubt pissed that he was reminding him of what they’d lost that day. Even in comparison to losing almost the whole world, it still was one of the most intense days they’d survived.

“You ever wonder why it didn’t give you this,” Sam motioned at the two of them wrapped up together, gloriously naked and sticky.

“No, never,” Dean said with a quick decisiveness that surprised both of them.

“Never, really?” Sam asked.

“I think the pearl thing knew that I already had it—my heart’s desire. I had my family. Just like I told Dad that night. He said he’d pictured me out of the hunting game, all settled down with a wife and kids, but I already had what I wanted. Even back then. My heart’s desire was to…well I guess I just wanted the chance to tell him that.”

Sam couldn’t speak with how much what was left unsaid by his brother meant to him. He’d known…well, he’d hoped that if (and when) they finally took this final step together, expressed their love physically, whatever you wanted to term it. Well, he’d thought that it would be the main thing for Dean, because he’d always been like that; carnal, physically and demonstrably affectionate. But this meant the opposite was true, it was good that he could still be surprised like that.

“Huh—“ Sam said, unable to come up with anything more coherent.

“Really, that’s all you got?” Dean asked, on the verge of rolling his eyes.

“I’m just surprised is all. I always thought it’d be the opposite thing for you. That if we ever got here,” Sam gestured at them still wrapped together, sticky, and so very satisfied, “I just figured that was the part you were missing most, that you’d be wishing for.”

Dean rolled away from him, and sat up on the edge of their bed. Wait, was it _their_ bed yet? He watched as Dean’s shoulders slumped and Sam felt his stomach clench with dread.

“I didn’t mean that, how it came out, I’m sorry. I just meant, all these years of seeing you chase after women wherever we went, I thought it meant that you needed that, more than you needed or wanted me,” Sam said, feeling like the whiniest little baby admitting it out loud.

Dean leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His back was tense, his shoulders nearly up to his ears. Sam took a chance and rolled over, curving his body around his brother, hoping that he’d get the message that way.

“I thought you were supposedly the smart one,” Dean finally said, leaning back just the tiniest bit into Sam’s body.

“Not about everything, obviously,” Sam admitted.

Dean turned a bit, leaning back more into Sam’s legs. His eyes searched Sam’s face for a long moment that stretched out into a silent conversation. Sam could see the uncertainty and fear fighting with the love and tenderness. It was fascinating and so fucking beautiful. He wanted to live in this moment between them forever. Whatever time was left here on earth, he ached with how much he just wanted to hold onto this feeling.

“Just say it,” Sam finally said, breaking the silence, unnerved that maybe he’d misunderstood their silent conversation. It seemed all-important to get it right at the start of things for them.

Dean grimaced and visibly struggled to pull the words out of himself. “I only did all that because I thought I couldn’t have you—like this. All of those women, and a few men to be honest, they were only placeholders for what I wanted and couldn’t have, which was you—you dumbass.”

Sam stopped himself from saying something dumb like: _really?_ or even worse: _you mean it?_ and went with a smile instead. Dean returned it, slow and warm, it made Sam’s toes curl up from the sheer happiness that wound through him.

“Let’s forget all that then, it’s all in the past, only you and me, from here on out,” Sam said, grabbing for Dean’s closest hand.

Dean clasped his other hand on top and squeezed tightly. “Only you, Sammy, only you.”

Sam set his pen down after writing this scene, satisfied with capturing how the momentous change between them had gone. He didn’t know or care who might read these words, but he hoped they’d understand what the love of two people had meant at the end of all things. He left the journal out on the library table in plain sight, hoping that Dean might read it.

****

A few weeks later Sam picked up the journal to add more details about the trading/barter system they’d worked out in the local community and was surprised to see several pages in Dean’s writing following his own.

He read them over, heart in his throat, then tears running down his cheeks. Dean’s point of view of that night, and all that had changed between them was…indescribable. He knew his brother was a deeply emotional person, but he always kept it all to himself, even now, he still did. And here it all was on the page, written down and somehow even more permanent, even more important.

Sam had to do something to thank his brother for the unexpected gift of his words, written down on the page like they were incised in stone on Moses’ tablets. He dug out one of the last bottles of whisky from where he’d hidden it for just such an occasion and poured two measures out in their best crystal. He found Dean in their room, lying on the bed reading one of the Vonnegut paperbacks that was barely holding itself together.

Sam sat on the bed, his hip pressing into Dean’s and handed him a whisky.

“What are we celebrating?” Dean asked, grasping the crystal tumbler with a confused adorable smile.

“Thanks for what you wrote in my journal,” Sam said, raising a glass of whisky in Dean’s direction.

Dean turned several shades of red, as he slowly sipped his whisky. “Well…uh—It’s the truth.”

“I know and I’m just grateful that you shared it with me, really, Dean, it means everything.”

“Sap,” Dean said with the sappiest grin Sam had seen in a while. He loved it when his brother’s eyes twinkled like that when he was trying to tease.

“Yes, and proud of it actually,” Sam said, smiling as he finished his whisky. He took the empty glass out of Dean’s hand and set both of them down on the bedside table. Sam stood up and drew his shirts off over his head, his eyes meeting Dean’s, pleased to see how instantly interested and on-board with where this thank you was heading.

*****

After things had settled down to a dull roar half a year post-Deluge, in what Sam had taken to calling Postilla, a Latin term for afterwards, he spent a lot of time researching the world’s flood myths. Luckily there was a lot on record in their own library. Pyrrha and Deucalion were the only two people to survive Zeus’ flood, and they had to do that on an ark. At least he and Dean had some company in this surviving the apocalypse thing, and weren’t stuck on an ark together. Sam tried and failed picturing Dean tolerating that for more than two hours maximum. He could however, picture spending however much longer they had alive alone together. That would be just fine with him. He’d waited so many years, and now that they were really together, Sam couldn’t imagine ever getting his fill of Dean.

The more he read and studied, Sam began to wonder whether The Deluge had been solely a man-made climate change disaster. It seemed like it could be that but also something more in their wheelhouse. It had never made much sense to him that the water level could possibly rise like that, and not ever recede. Something had to have made a huge and permanent change in the volume of water versus land. If the same amount of water existed in the world, then the amount of land had to have changed somehow. Like another continent’s worth displacing it all. He knew a little about the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift, but those things took a lot of time to really change the world’s surface.

A few weeks into his flood-myth research, Sam started having dreams about the real cause of the Deluge.He could see two impossibly enormous titans fighting and causing all the resulting death and destruction. It was terrifying to witness, even just in his dreams; all that rage and power unleashed without regard to what results might follow. It was night after night of chaos and fear, and he usually woke up gasping with panic about what would come next. Thankfully Dean had turned into a much heavier sleeper in the Postilla and he didn’t wake up and quiz Sam about his nightmares.

According to Sam’s dreams, it seemed likely that the disaster wasn’t *just* flooding from climate change. Sam saw scenes showing him something being released, that had been contained in the prison of the ancient ice sheets. It was one of the titans of old, that had been long forgotten, and its release was what caused the sudden cataclysmic flood that wiped out the entire Eastern seaboard, and flooded the Great Lakes. The release of this one titan, had

awoken the other that was in the volcanic planes beneath the Pacific (it sort of reminded Sam of that movie, Pacific Rim). These weren’t just unseeing unfeeling gigantic monsters; no, they were all that and they were demi-gods too. Angry ones. Insane ones, that hated each other. They only wanted to kill whatever was in their path to get to each other so that they could tear the other one apart.

The dreams continued for weeks, getting more and more detailed about why these titans were fighting each other. To Sam, the progression of the dreams seemed a bit like seeing a prequel to a movie you’d already watched. He had one dream in particular that was the clearest yet, and then he knew these dreams weren’t just his subconscious trying to solve the problems he had been researching. They really were a message of truth that he had been receiving…somehow..from someone.

Once he figured out that he was receiving messages, Sam’s first instinct was to tell Dean about the dreams. When he tried he couldn’t get it across well enough to his brother. It was frustrating because he couldn’t express the existential dread he felt as he saw their planet be thrashed by these remorseless monsters. Dean teased him that he was dreaming about monsters now since he didn’t get to hunt them any more, and that was the last time Sam said anything to him about it. Instead he turned to spending all of his spare time researching. It was easy enough to camouflage from Dean, who didn’t examine the books and papers spread out on the library tables too closely. He told him he was researching whether there was a way to replicate the bunker’s heated water and electricity spells on their fellow Lebanon residents’ homes. Dean loved that idea, because he still prickled at having to share their home with the others trooping through for showers and laundry.

Sam eventually came across a few references to these titans he kept dreaming about in one of the resources in the Men of Letters library. In the first one, it was stated that though the titan battle was inevitable and long-prophesied, there was only one way the titans could be stopped which was…there wasn’t a way spelled out exactly or clearly, but there was a legendary being mentioned in a few places in that text.

Finding a hint like that sent Sam off on another research tangent. Luckily they’d catalogued most of the information about legendary beings when they’d been researching Jack and his stolen grace situation. The only thing Sam could find that was much help was a reference to a being that sounded a whole lot like a super-powered nephilim. The description reminded him of what Jack was like right after he’d leveled up with consuming Michael’s grace. He’d been completely out of control, but juiced up and much too powerful for his own good. But their Jack was dead and gone as far as they knew. And there wasn’t a way to make another being like Jack without an archangel around.

The first night after he read about this legendary being, Sam’s dreams got much worse. Well, no, not exactly worse, but they got much more detailed, and horrifyingly so. He watched, helpless, night after night as the two titans battled their way across Asia and over into Russia. There had been people, lots of them that had survived the initial Deluge, but they were all being slaughtered as a result of the cataclysmic battling raging between the titans. To the titans, humans must seem as ants do to us; why should they care what happens to us? All they knew was rage and revenge and combat; after eons of being caged up, they battled with joyous abandon across the face of the Earth. And Sam had to watch it every time he closed his eyes. It all felt so real, like he was seeing it as it was happening, as if it was being transmitted to him somehow.

Sam again tried sharing the details of some of the titan battles, but Dean still didn’t believe his dreams were about anything that was real, so he stopped bothering to tell him.

After a few sleepless nights in a row, Sam got desperate for some real answers; about the dreams of the titans and how to find the super-powered nephilim legendary creature that could possibly stop them. In a last ditch effort he decided to contact an angel to ask for help. The usual prayers haven’t worked for them, and neither had the usual summoning spell. Sam dumped the container of angel feathers onto the table, running his fingers over all of them. They were almost dusty feeling to the touch, but he could still feel the thrum of power without quite touching them. He wished he had his powers back, they were useful in situations like this one. The memory of his lost powers brought a message in Ruby’s voice, clearly playing as a reminder of something he hadn’t thought of in a very long time. “You never needed the feather to fly, Dumbo. You had the power all along.”

He shrugged it off. Hearing her voice unbidden like that was all kinds of creepy, but it reminded him that he’d known what she meant the moment she’d said it. But then it had all gotten lost and jumbled-up when Dean was stabbing her and Lucifer was arriving. The bunker was empty and quiet at the moment, and he was tired of not getting much in the way of restful sleep. He hadn’t had a single night in weeks without having the horrible dreams.

Sitting at the worktable in the library, Sam went into a meditative state, still touching the angel feathers. He let himself remember what the powers had felt like all those years ago, how the ones he’d gained at twenty-one were add-ons to the powers he’d always had, but never named, not even to himself. The dreaming and seeing other layers of reality had always happened, and he’d never wanted to share it with his family, not after he’d learned that they hunted people who could do that sort of thing. He’d never practiced or intentionally developed his powers, instead he’d left them alone, had let them stay hidden, even from himself.

The latest dream of the titans reaching the climax of their battle replayed in his mind, and he called up the dread he’d felt upon awakening; the feeling of having to do something to prevent it from happening here again. This felt like it was a last chance. He needed everything, every tool at his disposal to make anything change.

He slowly drew his own powers out, the ones he kept hidden from himself and tried his best to use them, tried to connect on what they’d always called angel radio as he touched each feather. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on the feeling of each individual feather and the residual angel grace that was contained in the soft barbs and smooth shafts. He asked the question over and over again in his mind, picturing it going out as an SOS to anyone listening. “Is there anyone out there that could help? Anyone at all, please? If you hear this can you please answer me?”

He felt the physical changes that came with concentrated prayer, and reluctantly accepted the roiling dread in his belly at using his powers after so long. It would be worth it, it had to be. This wasn’t the same as using the demon blood. Dean wouldn’t like it, but he wouldn’t hate him…hopefully.

With an achingly familiar whoosh of musty ancient air, an angel came to answer Sam’s prayers and pleas. She wasn’t looking composed and perfectly business-suited as the angels had usually appeared to them. She was scattered looking; her piercing green eyes were unfocused and tired, her chestnut-brown curls in a messy cloud about her face, her clothing in full disarray. One lapel on her suit was torn-off and missing and her white blouse was mis-buttoned and untucked.

“Heaven is almost gone, and you are looking for help from us? Is this some sort of a joke?” She asked, arms crossed over her chest as she aimlessly looked around the library.

So she was a very snarky one, she reminded Sam of how Cas had been when they’d first met. Maybe if he could get past the snark she’d be able to help him somehow.

“Was it titans being unleashed? Was that what caused our planet to be nearly destroyed?” Sam asked.

“Yes, it was, but how could you know that?” The angel asked, her eyes flashing even greener and more inhuman. “And how did you even contact me, it should not be possible for a human!”

“It’s a long story. Let’s just say a whole lot of research and meditation. What I’m asking for right now is your help in finding a being, one that I’ve read about that can defeat the unleashed titans that have torn our planet apart. A nehphilim, one that was made by an archangel. We knew one before, Lucifer’s child, his name was Jack. We raised him for several years, we thought of him as our son. But he was in Chicago when the flood came, with our friend Castiel.”

The angel snorted at the mention of Castiel’s name.

“Yes of course you would be a friend of the angel who brought about Heaven’s destruction. Why should I do anything to help the likes of you, Samuel Winchester? And no, I will not be telling you my name, as I do not want you summoning me like you did with Castiel.”

“Yes, we were friends with him, we loved him and in his way he loved us. He helped us raise Jack the right way, he sacrificed everything for us, and we owe him to at least try. So…I’m hoping there’s another nephilim out there somewhere that you could find.”

The angel sighed and pursed her lips like she was holding back from saying something. She closed her eyes and faded a little bit from view. Sam could see the bookcase behind her barely shimmering form. She opened her eyes that blazed angel white for a moment, then she solidified again.

“I can find no nephilim remaining on this planet. But there was something that I can see, that might help. There was an enormous blast of power that went off in Chicago, on the day of the flood. When I look back at it, it feels like…how do I explain this to a human? It was like a thousand angels had sneezed all at once.”

Sam laughed out loud at the description. The angel made a displeased face that was momentarily terrifying. She couldn’t leave him, he desperately needed her help to save everyone that was left. “Sorry, I’m so sorry that I laughed, that’s just a funny image. But I get what you’re trying to say, go on, please.”

She raised one eyebrow and then scowled. “Well, it was lucky the flood had already wiped out Chicago because the energy from that blast would have leveled it. It may have been something to do with this Jack if he was there.”

“Was that energy blast what happened when Jack died?” Sam asked, at first excited at the new information and then gutted at the reminder of losing Jack all over again. His voice was more subdued when he asked the angel, “Or was it maybe something else?” Sam tried to remember what Jack had looked like the last time he’d seen him, leaving with Cas a week before the Deluge. Waving goodbye and smiling from the staircase in that goofy way he still had after everything. Sam missed him all over again with an ache that seemed to make his heart struggle to keep beating.

“I do not know what that energy blast was from, or if the one you call Jack has died, but what I can tell you is that your friend, Castiel is gone.”

“By saying Cas is gone, do you mean dead, like permanently dead?” Sam asked, because the word ‘gone’ didn’t seem at all permanent, not that death had ever been all that permanent in their lives.

She shook her head, sending her brown curls flying about her face. “No, not dead, he is gone, what is that human saying? He is off the grid, or off the playing field? One of those, I do not know, nor do I care. But hey, good luck figuring it out, huh?” The angel turned around slowly, eyeing the room like she was about to leave without answering anything else.

“Wait, can you somehow look in the Empty in case he’s stuck there?” Sam asked, hoping one last question would get answered.

The angel interrupted her turn and spun back around to face Sam abruptly, her face aglow with interest and surprise. “You know about that place, I mean that thing? The place is the thing, the thing is the place. Who am I kidding, of course, you know, you’re a Winchester,” the angel sighed and closed her eyes, going almost transparent again as she concentrated or searched or whatever it was they did.

She came back to solidity more slowly this time, as if the Empty were harder or farther to reach. Her expression was one of complete surprise. “Castiel was there in the Empty on the day of what you call the Deluge, because of the deal he had made to save Jack when he was dying a few years ago.”

“I don’t understand, what deal? One that Cas made with the Empty?” Sam asked.

"The deal was Jack lived and when Castiel was truly happy enough, the Empty would claim him, to have him there in the Empty forever.”

“So when he was with Jack in Chicago studying, Cas was finally happy enough to be collected,” Sam said, briefly wondering why Cas had never told them about this deal and why it had taken that long for Cas to be happy.

“But somehow, and this should not have been at all possible, but as we all well know, when it comes to you and your brother and your pet angel, all the usual rules do not apply in the normal fashion. He came back from there, Castiel came back to Earth with the Empty inside of him. Wait—or maybe…I cannot see it quite clearly enough. Perhaps he had become the Empty or vice versa, I am not sure, it is all a mess, it is very mixed up.“

“That’s okay, that’s great, it’s great to know all this, it really helps. Okay, so the Empty came back to Earth either in Cas or as Cas. But it’s not supposed to be able to be here on this plane of existence, right? At least that’s what Cas told us.”

“True, it was not ever going to work. It was not a whit sustainable for even a moment. I can see what happened, since as you likely know, all angel memories are instantly uploaded and saved. Think of it like a video journal we can all access. Jack was there when Castiel and the Empty returned, and from what I can glean from Castiel’s memories, Jack wanted to save Castiel, and much more importantly he wanted to protect all the humans on Earth from the effects of the Empty being here where it did not belong.”

“That’s my boy,” Sam murmured proudly, under his breath.

“Yes, yes he is quite something. You all did a good job with him, Samuel.” The angel gave him a slight, begrudging nod and almost smiled.

“Thanks,” Sam said, quietly proud that their joint attempts at raising a nephilim had been successful. His heart ached with the loss and grief he still had not fully dealt with. He hoped he never would, he wouldn’t ever be ready to completely let go.

The angel stepped back as if hit with a push or even a punch. “You still feel so strongly even after—I will try another way.” She concentrated again, wavering in and out of view. She came back into focus with her head tilted to the side like she was trying to watch a pay cable scrambled channel on tv. “I can see that Jack attempted to consume the Empty. No, that is not quite correct, he attempted to take the Empty out of Castiel and absorb it into himself. He could not kill it outright; he was not able to because it was inside Castiel…no, it was Castiel, and Jack could not bring himself to do that.”

“Sounds exactly like him,” Sam said, not caring about the raw awe and pride that was evident in his voice. Of course their Jack had been able to handle something so impossible.

“The last thing I see from Castiel’s memory is that Jack had become something else. Something besides what he had been—something more. Jack had basically torn Castiel to pieces. He was taking the Empty out so he could consume it. And afterwards he reassembled your angel, piece by bloody piece—into whatever he is now.”

“I’m so confused, where is Cas then? You said he was gone, but then you just said Jack remade him. Why couldn’t you find Cas if Jack remade him?”

The angel grimaced in concentration as she considered how to answer. “I was searching for an angel, and as I said, he is something else now. Castiel is not only an angel, so he can no longer appear as he had to we angel. And he can no longer appear to you in the vessel formerly known as the human, Jimmy Novak. The only thing that can hold Castiel now on this plane of existence or any other, is something much closer to his true angel form, and let me tell you, that is a marginal thing as it is.”

“But he’s still Cas though, right?” Sam asked, a small flame of hope igniting in his woefully stubborn heart.

“Call him Castiel-plus, for he is more than even I as an angel can comprehend.”

“That would mean, if he was still here on Earth in his angel-plus form, humans would probably die or go blind if they saw him?”

“Yes, that is likely. As he does not register as an angel any longer, it is hard for me to quantify exactly. Your Jack reassembled him into something other than angel, and I have no way to explain that to you as it shouldn’t have been possible. That is all that I really know.”

She squinted and wavered in and out of view. Her face suddenly paled in terror, she must have seen or realized something else. “I wish you good luck with what is coming, Samuel.”

The terrified angel poofed-out in that instant here-then-gone move that had always made Sam’s stomach turn over, it was just wrong when you saw it happen with your own eyes.

There had to be some way to contact Cas—no he was Cas-Plus now. Whatever he was, whatever Jack had made him into, Sam knew he was still their friend. And now, more than ever, he needed to talk to him, even if it was a risk.

When Sam’s finger touched one of Castiel’s old feathers on the table, the message he received from Cas-plus almost blew Sam’s mind apart. The words came to him in all of his senses, all at once. He could smell Castiel’s musty overcoat; could taste his peanut butter and honey sandwiches; he could feel the arms around him in an awkwardly long hug; he could see the blue eyes twinkling with the promise of a solution. His mind overloaded, but his stupid heart was full of hope, that was the last thought he had as the message came through, overloading his hearing, much too loud and entirely clear:

_~~~~~WE ARE COMING~~~~~~_

~~~~~

Dean found Sam slumped over the library table, dark blood dribbling out of both ears, completely limp and unresponsive. He hoisted him up into a fireman’s carry and dragged him back to his own bed, barely noticing the small pile of angel feathers on the library table. He took Sam’s temperature and felt for his pulse, he seemed normal, except for the bloody ears and being passed-out. He washed the dried blood off with a warm washcloth and Sam didn’t even stir. Something had really knocked him out.

Dean wasn’t sure whether to worry, it reminded him of what it was like when Sam had the visions all those years ago, although it had been mostly nosebleeds and some headaches back then. He changed Sam into some pajamas so he’d sleep more comfortably. It felt strange to move his brother’s body around for him, but it just seemed like something that’d help.

He changed into pajamas himself and curled up around Sam; protecting his body with his own the only way he knew how. “You better come back to me, Sammy. Or else…”

Dean tried not to, but all the worst case scenarios scrolled through his mind. A brain aneurysm finally blowing up, after all of those head traumas wouldn’t be too surprising. He wished he still had the ability to google all the symptoms and get some reassurance, or at least know what things to worry about or check Sam over for. Knowing how to prioritize your fears when your loved one was knocked out cold and bleeding from his ears was something he dearly wished was still possible.

_Loved one._ Oh yes, yes Sam was. He had always thought of Sam that way, in the sappiest terms possible, but only ever in his mind. Never saying it out loud for some unknown reason, men weren’t supposed to, Sam didn’t want that or need it, who knows. But he said it now, just in case it helped.

“You have to be okay, there’s no other option, you just have to. It’s like I wrote down for you, in your stupid journal. You’re everything to me, Sammy. There’s no way I’m sticking around if you go. You know that right? I’ll be up there in our heaven so fast you won’t even have a chance to wonder where I am. It’s all I could think about, for years after we went there that time with Joshua, remember that?”

Dean felt it unfold in his chest, in the smallest, most hidden part of his heart, that precious memory, the one that had kept him going all these years.

“I’ve always thought about that, you know, that we have one heaven and that’s where we’re going to be for eternity. You and me together, like we’re supposed to be. At least we have that going for us, when one of us goes, we know where we’re ending up. But this isn’t your time, not yet, Sam, no way. Not after we’ve finally gotten to have this, it wouldn’t be fair. You had so much darkness, so much pain, and now you’re happy. At least as happy as someone can be in this post-deluge world we’re stuck in, right? What is it you call it..the Postilla, yeah, you and your damn fancy Latin. So, listen up, here’s what we’re gonna do, I’m going to fall asleep holding you, and you’re going to wake up in the morning. You’re going to be starving because you skipped dinner. I’m gonna make you whatever you want for breakfast and you’ll eat it and complain about how there’s no coffee like you always do. Night, Sammy, love you,” Dean said, trailing off on the last words, wishing and hoping and maybe even praying that Sam had heard at least heard some of that, enough to bring him back.

******

Sam woke up in Dean’s bed, warm and cozy in his pajamas, hungry and thirsty, but strangely content. Like they’d spent all night talking and saying all the things they never said out loud to each other. That’s when he remembered the message, the one that had knocked his whole world upside down.

“They’re alive, Dean. C’mon, you gotta wake up, they’re coming.” He gently shook Dean’s arm that was around his waist.

“Who is?” Dean asked in a sleepy mumble against his back.

Sam sat up and ran his hands through his hair. “Jack and Cas, they’re alive, but they’re both…something else.”

“What does that even mean, something else? You’re not making any sense, dude. Is it your head or whatever? You were knocked out, blood comin’ out of your ears last night.”

Sam rubbed at his ears and remembered getting the message and how hard it had hit him. “I got a message from Cas, that they’re coming. Both of them, he and Jack are coming here. And he’s not just an angel anymore, she said to call him Cas-Plus. I summoned one last night.”

“Jack and Cas are what now? Wait, she—hold on, you summoned who now?” Dean asked, sitting up now and looking like an adorably alarmed hedgehog with his hair spiking in all directions.

“I summoned an angel, and the one who came, she told me what happened in Chicago back on Deluge Day.”

  
“That’s what those reports we’ve been hearing meant? The people going blind or dying. Or getting bleeding ears and hearing singing. It’s them, isn’t it? What do we do?” Dean asked.

“We get ready,” Sam said, turning over and trying to get out of bed. He was stopped by the arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him back down.

“I’m hoping that you’ve got a way to talk to them without getting knocked out every single time,” Dean said, not letting go.

Sam turned in the circle of Dean’s arms and looked at him closely. Dean was worried, still freaked out over probably having to find him knocked out last night. “I’m okay, Dean. I promise. And yeah, I do have a way, that was part of the message. Remember the glasses and the holy oil thing to see the hellhounds? We’ve basically got to do that but also with noise-canceling headphones.”

“I can’t believe they’re really…alive or whatever they are,” Dean said in a daze.

Sam cupped the side of Dean’s face, and let him see the whole truth. He didn’t hold back the unbridled hope and joy; or the worry and fear. Dean’s eyes searched and found it, and he believed.

After breakfast, as they were preparing the eyeglasses and headphones, pouring the holy oil, lighting it on fire and saying the words, Dean finally asked. Sam had been wondering if he’d get away with not talking about all this.

“This is because of your dreams. I didn’t listen, so you had to ask an angel. But how, Sam, the angel summoning spell hasn’t worked in years? Not since Heaven closed for business,” Dean asked.

“Me…it was, uh…me, my powers. I let them out, and it worked,” Sam said, glad to have the truth out there, but still dreading Dean’s reaction.

“Where’d you get the demon blood then?” Dean asked.

“No! That’s not what I mean, this was just me. Kind of like it was mostly just me before.”

“You—how though? I don’t get it,” Dean asked.

“I’ve always had abilities I guess you’d call them, ever since I was a little kid. But I never let myself use them, especially not after the whole demon blood thing. Even before that though, I never really tried, because we hunted things like me.”

“We did not, we hunted people who used powers or whatever like that for hurting others,” Dean corrected.

“Well, we both know that dad hated psychics, and you never let up about how you hated witches. And I didn’t want to be anything like either of those things, so I…just didn’t let myself.”

Dean took in a huge breath and held it for a very long time. He let it all out in a loud whoosh and asked, “But you did last night?”

“Yeah, the dreams really got to me, and when I woke up yesterday, it felt a lot more urgent, like I had to do something. So…I did,” Sam confessed.

“I’m glad you did,” Dean said.

“You are?” Sam asked as a flood of relief crashed into him as he realized Dean wasn’t going to hold this against him.

“Yeah, otherwise we wouldn’t have known to prepare. Besides, I think you’ve got respect for the whole powers thing. I trust you to do the right thing with it, Sammy.”

“I do have respect, definitely. And this is the right thing to do, I know it is. Thanks for trusting me,” Sam said.

Dean set down the glasses he’d drenched in holy oil. He took the headphones out of Sam’s hand and laid them on the table. He gathered Sam into his arms, pulling him down so that Sam had to tuck his head down against Dean’s neck. Sam knew this move, it was because Dean didn’t have to be up on tiptoes to hold him.

“I’m sorry you thought I didn’t trust you. Because I do, even with this stuff, we’ve both been through enough to know exactly what we have to do. We gotta stick together, you and me, no matter what comes, right?”

“You and me, just like we always do,” Sam agreed, speaking the words into Dean’s skin, hoping they’d sink into him and stay there forever.

*****

The last rumors they had heard came from the furthest northern outposts. The stories mostly revolved around a pair of strange figures walking down the new Eastern shores of the Mississippi. If anyone got too close or looked at them directly, they went blind or died. Sometimes it was said that they could hear something like singing, but the sound of it made people’s ears bleed. The figures weren’t exactly human looking, so it sounded like a campfire tale of exaggeration.

Sam and Dean set out on their horses east towards the Mississippi, they didn’t know how long it would take until they found Jack and Cas, but they both felt an increasing urgency about getting it done. As they traveled, Sam’s dreams got louder and more intense, he barely got any sleep, and woke Dean up in their two-man tent several times a night.

One of the things Sam heard from Cas-plus in his dreams was that they would definitely survive contact and communication with him if they used the en-spelled glasses and headphones. But they could no longer speak to Jack directly, only through Cas-plus and they mustn’t try to touch Jack. It was hard at first to imagine, and Sam felt his heart clench at the sight of Dean’s crestfallen face. He’d tried his best to explain to Dean how Jack and Cas were no longer the beings they’d known, but Dean hadn’t talked to the angel himself, and he wasn’t seeing and hearing it all happening in his dreams every night. Dean had still held onto the hope that things would be back to normal, so he was disappointed.

They resolved that morning over breakfast, that they had no choice, but to try and make it work. It would be hard to not touch Jack or talk to him, but they wanted to survive. They hadn’t left their campsite yet, Dean was still getting the horses packed up properly, when Sam felt it. It wasn’t a loud message that knocked him out this time, it was much more manageable, like Cas-plus had figured out how to turn himself down or something. All he knew was that they were close, they were coming. His heart raced with excitement and fear.

“Dean! They’re coming, we need the stuff, now!”

Dean quickly dug through the saddlebags and tossed him a pair of treated headphones and glasses. They donned both things and stood shoulder to shoulder looking towards the eastern horizon. The earth was shaking and the air was vibrating with some sort of song that the earphones were mostly blocking out. Dean reached out and grabbed Sam’s hand in his. Sam squeezed Dean’s hand gently and planted his feet a little firmer on the ground beneath him. He opened himself up to his powers, knowing that they were what would help them get through whatever came next.

They saw Cas first—well no—the angel had been right, it wasn’t Cas at all, but Cas-Plus, he was in his true angel form, all seventy-seven stories tall, just like the Chrysler building. It was hard to take him in all at once, almost a thousand feet tall, the angel grace blazing out in a glorious corona around him. It took Sam’s breath away to think that their friend, the angel they’d known all these years had always been this, but he’d never seen it with his own eyes, and he still really wasn’t, protected as his eyes were.

Sam took a moment to steady himself, holding on tightly to Dean’s hand he sent their friend a message—mind to mind.

“Cas, it is so damn good to see you, where’s Jack?”

“Jack is here, but he can’t—no he won’t show himself to you.”

“Why not? Dean and I want to see him, if it’s safe, I know he wouldn’t want to hurt us.”

Cas-Plus’ head turned away from them, and Sam received another message.

“He will try, but it won’t be for long.”

“Cas, please tell him, whatever he can do to make it so we can see him, even for a moment, we’ll be so damn happy.”

The enormous head of Cas-Plus nodded in agreement. Sam quickly passed on to Dean what he had been saying to Cas.

And then Jack was there, standing beside Cas-Plus, towering over him, not quite twice his size but pretty damn close. Sam dropped Dean’s hand and pressed his own hands across his mouth, holding in whatever was trying to come out. He was beside himself with how good it felt to see the man they had raised as their defacto son. He wished with everything he had that they could envelop Jack in a Winchester hug, but they couldn’t touch him. They couldn’t go near either of their friends now, it was hard enough just to be around them even with wearing the specially treated eyeglasses and headphones.

The rumble and purr of Jack’s voice as he spoke to Cas-Plus went through Sam, seeming to vibrate every single separate cell in his body. But Jack still smiled that goofy smile, and that was all Sam needed. His boy was still alive. Dean grabbed his hand again and squeezed it tight, acknowledging that he was thinking the same thing. Sam couldn’t peel his eyes away from the sight of Jack and Cas-Plus walking and talking and he was so damn glad to have Dean by his side through whatever happened next.

“Sam, Jack says he is the one you read about in the ancient texts. He can stop the two titans

but it is beyond his powers to undo the cataclysm.”

“That’s amazing, I knew it, I knew you were right about him, Cas. He’s going to save the world, he’s going to make it better.”

A sudden wave of something, fizzing and joyful came over them, tickling their skin, making them both laugh out loud with sudden happiness. Jack had heard what Sam had said and was very happy. Sam passed on what Cas-Plus had said to Dean.

“Good, that’s really good, Jack, we believe in you!” Dean shouted, grinning from ear to ear.

Sam sent the message to Cas-Plus and they waited as the two enormous figures seemed to communicate.

“His plan is to battle the titans on the edge of the new sea. He wants you to see him win. We will take you there.”

Before Sam could pass the message on to Dean or even think about what that meant, they were swooped up onto their horses and then were flying through the air towards the new sea. Sam looked over to see Dean’s worried face turn into delight at going at a speed the Impala used to top out at on her best days. It had been a while since he’d felt the wind in his hair like this and Sam whooped with the sheer joy of it. He heard Dean’s answering whoop and smiled over at his brother as they rode their surprised horses through the whistling winds towards wherever Jack was taking them.

The horses were let down onto the top of what used to be a sports stadium, the water lapped against it in uneven waves like they hadn’t quite gotten used to hitting the new shores. Sam worried about how they’d get down, presuming that they would survive watching this battle. Dean pointed out the sturdy concrete stairs leading eventually to an elevated walkway that led the rest of the way down to the ground. They turned to watch in silence as Jack’s plan unfolded before them.

Just as Jack had predicted, his presence lured the two titans to the new northern shores of the sea. The water was pushed in large waves before the titans and it lapped higher up the sides of the stadium. The horses whinnied and shied, until the brothers settled them down.

Sam and Dean had come to bear witness and see Jack do battle, but they didn’t want to see anything bad happen to him. Neither of them knew what to expect or even feel or hope for in that moment. They were rooting for Jack with everything they had, for him to succeed, to take the titans away, to make the world safe again. They could barely see the shape of Cas-Plus far away, his figure low on the horizon. Then he began to run towards them in enormous steps, waving his arms in alarm.

They could see the two titans approach where Jack stood, striding along the submerged American plains, their faces set for ruin and victory. They stopped a few hundred feet away, towering over the much smaller figure of Jack—their boy standing alone. Sam felt his heart stutter with fear for Jack, but then it skipped back into beat with the pride of seeing him fight for their world. The titans were so huge, they seemed to be blotting out the sky like two moving death stars compared to Jack and Cas-Plus’ skyscrapers.

Jack just stood right where he had decided to have the battle. Right there below them at the edge of the new sea, his feet were planted a shoulder’s width apart in the fighting stance Dean had taught him so long ago. He glared up into the titan’s faces, set his shoulders with intention just as Sam had taught him so long ago. And then in an enormous rush of movement and power, he grew to ten times the titan’s size. Before the titans could react he opened his now inconceivably large mouth and consumed them both, just like he did Michael’s grace and The Empty. 

When he was done, Jack pretended to burp and smiled down at Sam and Dean with his planet- altering sized smile and then reached his arms overhead. They could barely see his fingertips, they were so far up above them where they stood near the ocean’s shore. But they could see it as Jack opened a glowing rip in the sky above them all. It was just like the one they’d seen back when Jack was born, just like the ones the brothers, their mother, Michael and all the others had used to travel between the worlds.

Jack couldn’t seem to move his body on his own, his face showed the strain of trying, his feet seem to be tied to the earth where he stood. Maybe it was the weight of the two titans he’d just eaten, or maybe they were inside of him fighting their way out, neither of the brothers could really tell. Cas-Plus suddenly rushed past their field of view, tearing through the water at an enormous speed, he crashed into Jack. The force of their collision pushed them both through the rip in the sky. The tear in the sky zipped itself closed behind the two of them. Just like that, blink and you missed it, Cas-plus and Jack were gone. They took the titans and The Empty along with them, passing through into another universe and were presumably gone forever.

The brothers dismounted from their horses, and slowly took off their holy-oil treated glasses and headphones, the sound and color of the world resetting itself back to a more normal level. They stood there together at the water’s edge for a long time in silence, arms around each other, looking out sightlessly into a world without their friends. But a world that had been saved from further ruin.

“So, that’s it then?” Dean finally asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Sam answered.

The sacrifice of these beings, Jack and Cas that they’d both loved for so long, their last friends from the Before, was the last straw. Sam and Dean began their final retreat from the world. They didn’t ever make a permanent return to the bunker, this wasn’t decided in any big discussion or debate, but it just organically happened. Instead they wandered the remaining land riding Khal & Khaleesi. They scavenged food and visited the remaining human settlements they came across. Sam told the tale nightly of how the world was saved wherever there were people to listen, reading from his well-used journal. People took the time to painstakingly copy the book, writing page by page, leaving nothing out of the final chapter of what had by then come to be called the Winchester Gospels.

*****

**2040**

Now in what they’re pretty sure is the year 2040, (there has been an ongoing argument that was at first mildly amusing and then became annoying, enough said about it), now they are pleasantly surprised to find themselves sixty-one and fifty-seven years old, both gone grey, their faces and hands thoroughly wrinkled with their days in the sun, as well as their nights in the cold under the stars. But still they travel the roads, together.

There were a few blank pages remaining in his journal, and Sam was filling them with a final passage as he sat by their fire, Dean asleep and warm at his hip. Lemuria, Ys, Atlantis, it was all true, all of those ancient cities and civilizations were once vibrant and alive and then wiped off the face of the earth by the sea. And now it had been their modern world’s turn, they were just lucky enough to be among the survivors. Most days it didn’t feel like anything close to luck, but the world’s worst curse. But it wasn’t, not really. Not when the sun still rose and set on the only person alive who still mattered to Sam, his partner in love and survival.

_The End_


End file.
